How a cold approach to Watergate Bay Hotel turned into one of my favourite projects yet

This one started with me sending a message into the unknown.

I was looking for more stories to tell, hotels and places with a feeling I could actually capture, and Watergate Bay had been on my radar for a while. Not because it was the obvious choice, but because there's something about that stretch of coast that has always felt cinematic to me. So I reached out. And they said yes.

From the start it was a collaboration. Not a brief handed down, not a shot list to tick off. A conversation about what the hotel meant, what it felt like to stay there, and how a short film could carry that feeling to someone who hadn't been yet.

I stayed in one of the beach lofts. I don't say this lightly; it's one of the most considered spaces I've been in. Floor to ceiling ocean views, the sound of the sea from the moment you wake up, and that particular quality of light that Cornwall does better than anywhere. I filmed a lot of it just because I couldn't stop looking at it.

Dinner at Zacry's was something else. I've eaten well in Cornwall but that meal stayed with me. There's a confidence to it; local, unpretentious, genuinely good. The kind of food that feels like it belongs exactly where it is.

And then the sauna by the sea. I'd been surfing and I was cold and tired and I sat in that sauna looking out at the water and thought this is exactly the kind of thing that doesn't make it into a photo. This is why you need a film.

That thought is the one that drives everything I do. The moments that make a place what it is; the warmth after a cold sea, the view from a room you didn't want to leave, the meal that made you slow down. Those are the things that make someone book. Not the polished exterior shot and not the logo on the wall.

I made the film the way I always do. As a guest first, a filmmaker second. I let the stay lead and captured what it gave me.

When Watergate Bay told me they were using the film in their email newsletters and paid ads, I was genuinely proud. Not because of where it ended up, but because of what it meant. That the feeling I was trying to create had landed. That someone watched it and felt something.

That's how I know I've done something right.

- Ells